‘The friendship that we offer people is one of the most important things we’re able to give.’ Photo: Images courtesy of Brighton Friends
Soul food: Helen Ledger & Kate Mackrell on how Brighton Friends are welcoming asylum seekers
‘The cooks relax, and we all laugh together.’
In early 2022, when Brighton Quaker Sanctuary group realised that there were many asylum-seekers being housed in hotels in Brighton, with very little support, we wanted to get involved. After contacting local groups (Sanctuary on Sea, Care for Calais, Brighton Migrant Solidarity, and the Network of International Women), we decided that, as people were feeling unwell with the food that they were being given at the hotel, we would offer people the chance to come and cook food from their own cultures, working together, and getting to know each other and ourselves. We started in mid-March 2022, initially fortnightly, but then weekly as interest grew. We also ran English classes for about eight months until the council and colleges began to run regular classes in town.
Every week we invite up to ten asylum seekers to cook and share a meal at our Meeting house. We take one or two people shopping, and pay for the food. We then head back to the Meeting house, and the veg chopping begins! We pay bus fares for people to get to the Meeting house and back to wherever they are staying. We have had asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Turkey, Saudi, Iran, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, Rwanda, Malaysia, Namibia, Kenya, Mauritius, and more.
It seems to have gone really well. The cooks relax, and we all laugh together. They have found great pleasure in eating the tastes of home in a friendly, welcoming environment, which is particularly important for the children, who found eating unfamiliar food difficult. We are impressed by how well the individual asylum seekers get on among themselves. Christians, Sikhs, and Muslims, from a variety of countries, join in together, prepare the food together, sit down and eat together, and talk English because that’s the only common language. It’s wonderful to see how much they progress with their language skills.
We have had feasts of food from Turkey, El Salvador, Honduras, Mauritius and Iran. Initially, there were also Kurdish people from several countries who came. In the holidays, children come and we put on activities for them.
We also help in other ways. We have taken people to their interviews with the Home Office up in London and Croydon, help people with hospital appointments, and find dentists and opticians; we even hosted a baby shower at the Meeting house. We’ve also given ongoing support to those who have been given right to remain, for example with finding material goods for their houses and generally giving emotional support and friendship wherever we can. The friendship that we offer people is one of the most important things we’re able to give.
Here are some vignettes from the past few weeks.
Ada came up and asked if she could print something. We went to the office, and she showed our warden a way to print from the Whatsapp communications tool, which he’d never seen before. Ada is a gay Christian from Turkey. She’d been given leave to remain and hence was being evicted from the hotel with no place to go. She was scared. She printed letters from her college tutors to bring to her appointment with the council housing people. These recommended her very highly, and stressed the need for her to have a stable place to live. She tells me about her diabetes as we walk to the office. Sadly, the council was unable to help. It has responsibility to house people with children, but not adults alone, and is very stretched. Another organisation, Thousand for a Thousand (T4K), was able to get some temporary accommodation for Ada. She tells me that she did not plan to come and stay in the UK, but has been here for almost two years and is still in shock. She had to leave her home, her office, her family, her partner and child. She is not used to being alone and in need, and is very upset about her housing situation. She practised as a criminal lawyer for twelve years in Istanbul and, although we experience her as very fluent in English, she is facing a lot of obstacles because of the language barrier. Even with completely fluent English, Ada would not be able to get a job as a lawyer due to the differences in the laws and the legal system. So she is applying for a job as wellbeing facilitator, wanting to help people, especially refugees, to understand their needs and support them and build their wellbeing. And she will start a GCSE English course in September.
Work is a huge issue. After a year, asylum seekers applying for refugee status are allowed to work – but are limited to jobs on a shortage list, such as engineers in nuclear facilities, classical ballet dancers, or maths teachers. The only unskilled job listed is care worker.
It was K’s birthday a few weeks ago. K is from Namibia, and started coming a few months ago when she first arrived in Brighton. The first time she came, one of us went with her afterwards to bring her to Community Base, where she could learn about more possibilities for support; we then went on to help her pick up the bus pass the council gives asylum seekers for their first month here. On her birthday she seemed much more relaxed and at home. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to her in English, Spanish and Arabic, and had a delicious cake. But today she has been told that she will have to leave the hotel in fourteen days; she had not appeared for her interview, since she had not received the letter inviting her. Thankfully, T4K is helping. But she is very stressed.
L has just walked in, with glorious burgundy hair. Last week she was talking about wanting to dye it, and how she’d need to bleach it first, as it’s naturally black. She’s done it! She and a friend came for the tea and cakes our Meeting offers to welcome people during Brighton Pride in August, and I mentioned to them how challenging it is for trans people in the UK. She and her friend just looked at each other, looked back at me, and L said ‘in Saudi we’d be dead’. Her friend is not living in Brighton, and has been put in all-male accommodation. L tells me she is very depressed. Another trans woman, M, who had been a regular member of the cooking group, was suddenly moved away from Brighton, rich in resources for trans people, to an isolated area in Birmingham.
It’s common for friends to be moved on to different places, often with little notice. A chance conversation with S led to her demonstrating some dancing at a creativity afternoon we had in September. We celebrated that her two sons were able to join her from Mauritius – but then the whole family was moved to London.
In different weeks, people cook for their own culture, but everyone supports each other, sharing all the preparation. V is cooking Colombian food today. She has been refused right to remain, along with her sixteen-year-old son. She is appealing, with help from some of the other refugee organisations. She seems calm, and totally absorbed in the cooking.
AS and his mother JW, Sikhs from Kabul, also do a lot of the cooking, along with brother GS when he can make it from college. He and his family used to cook for the gurdwara in Kabul. He has shown me, with pride, pictures of the food he cooked for 100 at a local church. It took four hours and he managed it on £130. JW spoke no English when she came. Now, asked what she’d like to drink, she says ‘green tea please’. His food, and V’s, is some of the best Kate has ever tasted.
W is from Rwanda. She has been fabulous at encouraging other asylum seekers at the hotel to come to our cooking sessions. She says that some people come, some people refuse. Some say they want to come but, when the time comes, they just stay in their rooms. Maybe too depressed? She doesn’t know why. She wants us to keep doing this because it helps people. She was first invited by another resident of the hotel, who knew that she had problems with her stomach, caused by the food in the hotel. The hospital helped a bit with some tablets, but Helen was the first person in Brighton to give her something that really worked: lots of tins of prunes! If she gets the right to remain, she would like to help other refugees – she would really like to see people in the hotel be able to cook their own food.
N, from Iran, got involved with the cooking project late in 2022, and we have given her a lot of support. In turn, she has helped with an origami project run by one of us once a week at All Saints church. She got leave to remain in early 2023 and was housed with her fourteen-year-old son in emergency accommodation, so small that they had to share a bed. She has finally got a house – with nothing. She contacted Helen, very distressed. Helen put out an appeal to Meeting, and many people have responded: she will have everything she needs.
We have about a dozen people helping out on a regular basis. Each week one person goes shopping with the people cooking, while two others set up the kitchen.
One local Friend says that being involved makes her feel more actively connected to her community. It helps cement a sense of overall wellbeing, living her values, and is an important part of her life. She can’t often come on Sundays, so this is her Quaker practice, being with other Quakers in a space that is progressive and liberating.
Another helped out with refugees in Canada, where provision is much more generous. She knows from this experience just how challenging settling in a new country and culture is, even with far less uncertainty and a much greater welcome. She is in awe of the asylum seekers she meets in Brighton.
One Friend’s parents were Jewish refugees after world war two. The situation with refugees resonates deeply with him. In his working life he met people who were discriminated against for race, religion, and gender, and he was appalled. He feels it’s really important to fight against discrimination of any kind.
Another states that all of us who help have learned a lot, not just about food and cooking, but about people’s way of life. She is confident that, given the opportunity, all of our visitors will go on to be assets to British society. She says that we are missing a lot by not accepting them straight away.
So far, we have almost always found someone to fill in if a helper cannot make it, and we’ve managed to adjust our timetables when the language schools changed theirs. And – wonderfully – the project is entirely supported by donations; the Meeting adds support if needed – a display of artwork for sale and a concert have been held in support.
Who knows what the future will be? We don’t know how long we will have asylum seekers here. The men’s hotel has been emptied. Possibly the other hotel will empty as well. We all know about the infamous barges…
We thoroughly recommend doing this in other Meetings, where possible. You need a health and safety-approved kitchen and volunteers need to follow safeguarding procedures, but otherwise it’s just goodwill and a friendly face. It is a delight to make connections with some beautiful, resilient and resourceful people from all over the world, and give them a bit of a welcome here. We’d also love to hear from anyone who is doing anything similar.
Helen & Kate also included contributions from members of the Brighton Sanctuary group and local Friends.
Comments
Clarification - by local Friends I meant our friends the asylum-seekers.
By katemackrell on 2nd May 2024 - 11:45
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